A lawsuit says Alabama's congressional districts are racially gerrymandered. The action also charges that district boundaries are designed limit Black voters' influence in all but one of the State’s congressional districts. “Alabama’s current Congressional redistricting plan, enacted in 2011 is malapportioned and racially gerrymandered, packing black voters in a single majority-black Congressional district,” the lawsuit states. The action argues that legislators packed as “many minorities as possible” into the congressional district that stretches from Birmingham through west Alabama and into Montgomery — “thereby weakening minorities’ voting influence throughout the state.”
The lawsuit argues that Alabama should have a second district with significant Black voter influence. “By returning to Alabama’s traditional redistricting principle of aggregating whole counties, Alabama can remedy the existing racial gerrymander, restore a measure of rationality and fairness to Alabama’s Congressional redistricting process, and afford African Americans an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in at least two districts,” the lawsuit states. Alabama senators Rodger Smitherman and Bobby Singleton and several voters filed the suit ahead of an expected special session on redrawing the maps. No comment from Secretary of State John Merrill, who’s the defendant.
